Don Johnson

Filmmaker S. Craig Zahler brought a blast of offbeat creativity to the Western genre two years ago with his freak-out Bone Tomahawk. And he's back now to reinvent the prison movie with this highly stylised, powerfully violent dramatic thriller. It takes the tone of a 1970s exploitation movie, digging into the more emotional sides of the story as the grisliness escalates. And it also gives Vince Vaughn a character unlike anyone he's ever played: beefy, unstoppable and intriguingly sensitive.

He stars as recovering alcoholic Bradley, who lives in upstate New York with his wife Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter). He has just discovered that she's had an affair, so he takes out his rage on her car before stopping for a reasonable discussion about putting their marriage back together. The problem seems to be connected to their lack of money, so he approaches his old friend Gil (Marc Blucas) about taking a job as a drug runner. And the larger cashflow indeed improves their relationship until Bradley is arrested following a massive shootout with the cops. In prison, a mystery man (Udo Kier) tells Bradley that the now-pregnant Lauren will be killed unless he murders someone in the notorious high-security wing at Redleaf Penitentiary, a fortress run by the sadistic warden Tuggs (Don Johnson).

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While the story isn't particularly original, and the movie tends to drift over the top into broad slapstick, this comedy wins us over due to the camaraderie between the characters. Most refreshingly, this is a film about women teaming up rather than scratching each others' eyes out. So it continually catches us off guard in all the right ways.

In Manhattan, lawyer Carly (Cameron Diaz) has finally met the perfect man in Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). But just as their relationship is about to shift into something much more serious, she discovers that he has a wife, Kate (Leslie Mann), in the suburbs. Shocked, Carly and Kate realise that Mark is the person they should be angry at, so they team up to get even. When they discover that he has another mistress, Amber (Kate Upton), they recruit her to their plan as well. And then they find evidence that his business dealings are more than a little dodgy.

While the plot lends itself to a blackly comical approach, director Nick Cassavetes instead keeps everything silly and simplistic, letting the actresses overplay their scenes. Sometimes this results in something rather hilarious, but it also undermines any credibility the story might have. Mann and Coster-Waldau are the most guilty in this sense, chomping madly on the scenery. Instead, it's the way each character works together that brings the situations to life and keeps us laughing. Although a more confident approach to the material would have made the film much stronger.

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Tarantino takes an unusually comical approach to a provocative topic, and the result is as controversial as expected. And also startlingly hilarious. At its core, this is another revenge-themed thriller, but Tarantino's snappy, constantly surprising aproach spirals out to explore racial issues over the past 150 years with humour, drama and, of course, grisly violence.

Set two years before the American Civil War in 1858 Texas, the story centres on bounty hunter Schultz (Waltz), who offers the slave Django (Foxx) what seems like a fantasy job: to work with him to capture white criminals dead or alive. Usually dead. Sure enough, everyone is shocked to see a black man not only riding a horse but carrying a gun. When Django helps find three notorious outlaw brothers, he earns his freedom, and Schultz then offers to help free Django's enslaved wife (Washington). This involves staging an elaborate sting on her owner, the bloodthirsty Mississippi plantation owner Calvin (DiCaprio), who runs a ring of slaves who fight each other to the death. But Calvin's butler Stephen (Jackson) suspects that something is up.

Waltz and Foxx have terrific chemistry in the central roles, with Waltz's lively intelligence bouncing off Foxx's physical and emotional intensity. This gives the film an underlying drive that keeps us engaged through the blood-soaked violence as well as the more slapstick-style sequences (a KKK raid led by Johnson and Hill feels like a lost sequence from Blazing Saddles). But Tarantino's screenplay is beautifully constructed to even out the tone with exciting action, harrowing nastiness and some darkly involving drama. All while quietly exploring the twisted history of racial relations in America.

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